Every Sunday Morning

Early Thinking in Relationships

Xbri — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:55:14 +0000

Stage 1: The first questions are, “Do I like her, and am I attracted to her?” This is easy. If I call her on the phone and 90 minutes pass in a blink, there’s probably liking. And attraction takes a glance.

Stage 2: Will she support me and can I support her? This is attached to the old adage that you want to be with someone whose confidence in you makes you a better person. This stage depends on intelligence, willpower, and values.

Stage 3: Is she caring? Everyone is caring in the early throws of love. But the real question is whether she can be caring beyond that – the kind of caring that leads to patience on rough days, understanding of terrible mistakes, and attention to feelings that might otherwise be missed.

Stage 4: Is her company fulfilling? Does she expand my horizons and make me think and learn and wonder about the world? Does she challenge me?

Back to Blogging

Xbri — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 04:42:51 +0000

I’ll try to pick up my poetry blog again… see you next week.

–Xbri

Giving thanks

Xbri — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:03:32 +0000

Sara had a habit of expressing
how fortunate we were. After reading the newspaper
she’d say Aren’t we fortunate we don’t have
that disease. And I’d think how happy she
could be with a pathology textbook.
But some days, I do not feel fortunate.
I feel like someone could write a book on
my pathologies. Knee pain at 28? And
worst of all, this loneliness. Although I would
never say, How fortunate that we aren’t alone.
Only, Please pass the salt.

12:22 am

Xbri — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:23:53 +0000

It. Is. Late. Damn. I need to get an early start tomorrow.

I’m loving yoga as a complement to rock climbing and swimming. All this makes me out to be a bit of a fitness nut, but what else have I got to do? I can’t go out and socialize and I need to do something to work off the stress.

Single, again

Xbri — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:06:55 +0000

It’s the Weekend! It’s Sunny!

Xbri — Sat, 23 May 2009 23:35:48 +0000

Tara Stiles (who made this video – I have nothing to do with it) has some good videos on youtube about how to do inversions in yoga. Doesn’t this video make you want to do handstands, too?

Being Earth on a Wednesday

Xbri — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:27:40 +0000

Sometimes, you just really miss the ice ages.

Why?… Well it wasn’t the cold. Maybe it was the silence and its occasional punctuation. Silence before “peace” was defined; emptiness quite aside from “serenity.” Shivering tribes, scrappy bits of life, and ice sheets across the horizon. Every once in a while, a million tons of ice shattered or a continent broke away.

Now: there are trillions of creatures. It’s crowded in 2009. And people all think they have my identity down pat. They say that I take 365.256366 days to travel around the sun. I bulge in the waist. I’m middle aged. I tilt 23 degrees on my axis – (hey, everybody tilts somewhat). And I’m not remotely unique: peer out into the solar system and there are many others just like me.

So what’s an unremarkable, stressed out planet to do?

See a shrink? Try yoga? Count sun spots? They tell me that my path is fixed; but I’m not really worried about that. All I know is: the ice ages are over and suddenly silence means being alone.

—————————————-

Note: Yes, I know there were trillions of organisms on the Earth back during the ice ages, too. I’m taking some poetic license.

Wow, the world changes fast

Xbri — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:36:07 +0000

World population 1960: about 3 billion

Population 2009: about 6.5 billion

Population 2025: about 8.5 billion

Population 2050: about 11.5 billion

And, oh yes, you know those things called the Colorado River and Rio Grande that you learned about in grade school? Those big wandering blue lines that reached from the mountains to the sea on a map of the U.S.? Well, they don’t reach the sea anymore! We drain them off for agriculture, drinking water, etc. before they get there. (Factoid courtesy of The Economist, April 11, 2009). For river aficionados: the same goes for the Indus River in India, Murray-Darling in Australia, and the Yellow River in China.

Lunch poem

Xbri — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:26:01 +0000

No greens. No grains. Just chicken breast and hoisin sauce.

The sauce gathers in the bottom of my ceramic bowl:

“Nova Brown – 4933 – China”

Is there a philosophy of life in this lunch I’m eating?

Simplicity, perhaps? Or speed? Utilitarian consumption.

Well, I don’t think it’s my philosophy. My philosophy needs green beans.

Feeling This?

Xbri — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 05:39:36 +0000

Watching movement, our minds rehearse moving;
Watching others’ cry makes us sad.
And so, too, the effect of grass, twisting and tilting in the wind. I am grass and wind.

To hear music is to expand, out and away, vibrating on air.
Syncronize. Move with the strength of ten. Dance with us, with arms and heart.

Listen to a song, seize the arc of emotion and the weft of life. In sadness we are together, but still we manage to carry each other out into the sand and redrock of morning.

Find your breadth, seek warmth, snooze. Does a dog attain enlightenment? Yes, by the fireplace after dinner. But I prefer to be a whale, slaloming the ocean’s current.

We are more than human, though greatest in our humanity. This is the mantra for our millennium (the first millennium with a mantra, at that): I see you seeing me, hugging me hugging you. Ask us about our first kiss. Never be alone in loneliness. Dance, sing, kiss, hop over, and join us.

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For what it’s worth, the world’s first video-linked poem (I think). I’m not especially happy with the poem, but oh well. All underlined words are linked.

Video notes: (1) Yang LiPing won an all-China dance contest while rebelling against classical training. The dance is long but cool. In general, I suggest you click on the link rather than watching the videos in the mini-windows that open up.